Bill Burr Yells FREE LUIGI, Democrat Policy FORCED Insurance Companies To FLEE LA Wildfire
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Summary
The California fires have been devastating and the death toll stands at 27. Who's at fault? Was this an act of nature or is climate change to blame? In this episode of the Timestampscast, host Ryan Henderson answers the question: Is it the government, the fire department, or the insurance companies?
Transcript
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The California wildfires have been devastating.
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Winds have died down a bit, but there is concern they could come back.
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Was this mismanagement by government authorities?
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Was this an act of nature or is climate change to blame?
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You're a moron if you don't believe it's climate change because it's here and it's coming for all of us.
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But I think the reality is, while we can look at wildfires occurring all the time, it was mismanaged.
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Now, recently, Bill Burr, the comedian, went on Jimmy Kimmel and said that we're all a bunch of idiots because we think that they're doing a bad job in California.
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Now, of course, to the firefighters, first responders, the people risking their lives, their heroes, nobody's criticizing the hard work.
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We're criticizing the policy around, well, the Democratic politicians around fires, around the fire department, around insurance.
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You know, they voted to build reservoirs and never did.
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There's a dam that they were supposed to build a while ago, but it's blocked off because everyone's fighting about it.
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The L.A. Fire Department was underserved, underfunded, did not have enough firefighters.
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Now, I've criticized Bill Burr on this one before, but he takes it a step further, jokingly, I hope, yelling, free Luigi.
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Because he's criticizing the insurance companies, saying no one's going to call them out.
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These guys in their underwear are saying, why don't you fly a helicopter into the ocean at 100 knot winds, you moron.
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But you're not going to call it the insurance companies who pulled out, won't cover these homes, and they're still going to pay themselves a bonus.
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And then everybody claps and he yells, free Luigi.
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But let's talk about the insurance company scandal because, boy, oh boy, can I break it down for you.
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First of all, I'm going to say the climate change argument I can debunk rather easily.
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There's been a drought in California every single decade.
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You can't blame drought and claim it's global warming.
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But, of course, nearly every news outlet's doing that.
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And I'll talk to you about how they passed a proposition in California restricting insurance companies from increasing rates.
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They've mismanaged the forest floor and the brush floor, increasing the risk of wildfires.
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They've put restrictions on what people can do with water.
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Ultimately, the mismanagement leads to a situation where insurance company says, we can't mitigate the fire damage.
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And the reinsurers are basically saying the same thing.
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Before we get into all that, my friends, make sure you head over to castbrew.com and pick up a delicious bag of castbrew coffee.
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Let's take a look at the first story from the New York Post.
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Bill Burr unloads on insurance companies, praises Luigi Mangione in L.A. Fire Rant Free Luigi.
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The winds moved, but, you know, the fire was coming and all that stuff, so I feel lucky.
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Why didn't you just fly a helicopter into the ocean?
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Looking at the footage on the Internet, I have determined that this here was mismanaged.
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They're talking about looting, but CNN and Fox News are not going to bring up the insurance companies
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that are just going to keep everybody's premiums and still give themselves a bonus.
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But as of late, he's just been towing this line which defends massive corporations and
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I'd like to say the Free Luigi comment was a joke, but tons of leftists have been posting
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When news broke that insurance companies had previously pulled out of California, people
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are posting memes where they have like a phone with Luigi Mangione on speed dial.
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He's the guy who murdered a health care insurance CEO in cold blood, blaming the insurance companies
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for, unfortunately, what it is, is a government problem.
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Before we get into the nitty gritty of how the insurance companies worked and how this is
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the fault of the government, let's take a look at the direct fault of the government.
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L.A. Fire Department bosses sent just five fire engines to Palisades Fire while holding
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back 1,000 firefighters and 35 trucks in the critical first hours.
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New York Post reporting, Los Angeles fire bosses deployed just a fraction of its firefighters
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and trucks to the deadly Palisades Fire until it was already out of control, sending just
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five of the 40 available fire engines and holding back 1,000 firefighters, according to a
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The critical decisions blasted by experts and ex-fire chiefs as a spate of missteps were
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And as extreme warnings were coming in about life-threatening winds that turned the blaze
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into the most destructive in L.A. history, quote, you would have had a better chance to
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get a better result if you deployed those engines.
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Former LAFD battalion chief Rick Crawford told the L.A. Times, you give yourself the best
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If you do that, you have the ability to say, I threw everything at it at the outset.
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He continued, adding the choices were part of a domino effect of missteps by officials.
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Officials held off on ordering hundreds of available fire crews to remain on duty for a
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second shift last Tuesday, which would have doubled the manpower on hand to help battle
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flames taking hold in the Pacific Palisades neighborhood.
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According to internal fire department records obtained by the Times, despite being available,
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no extra engines were readied in the Palisades region prior to the fire breaking out there,
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L.A.'s deputy chief Richard Fields, who is in charge of staffing and equipment, stressed
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that his plan was appropriate for immediate response and slammed critics for playing Monday
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His boss, Chief Christian Crowley, also defended the decision.
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The Times also reported that before the fires, LAFD leaders decided
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not to deploy additional engines to fire prone areas like the Palisades.
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However, nine engines were positioned in Hollywood and the San Fernando Valley in anticipation of
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I don't think a former battalion chief is some random guy sitting in his underwear when he
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says it was a domino effect of misstep after misstep after misstep.
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Now, of course, I can go through that huge whole list over and over again, as I had done.
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But I think this should be enough context for all of you to understand that this guy going on Jimmy
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Kimmel, Jimmy Kimmel himself are misleading you.
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I think Bill Burr doesn't pay attention and is making jokes.
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But I'm really concerned about that free Luigi comment.
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People don't like insurance companies and I get it.
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But this is not an issue of just the private sector.
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I can't really blame an insurance company for being unable to insure property.
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It's not the insurance company said, you know what?
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We don't want to insure them because it cuts into our profits.
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We are trying to make sure this is reasonable for the insurance company, but we keep losing
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The regulation and the mismanagement make it impossible to do.
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Of course, insurance companies want to make profits.
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But insurance companies are going to say, how much money can we make?
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Mismanagement, a failure to build new reservoirs, to fill the existing reservoirs, to provide
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proper funding to the L.A. Fire Department, to hire enough firefighters.
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And eventually, the insurance company says, guys, it doesn't matter what we do.
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If we insure this at any rate, the government is not going to do anything to mitigate fire
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AccuWeather estimates more than $250 billion in damages and economic loss from L.A.
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To put the magnitude of loss into context, this latest damage and economic loss estimates
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surpasses the numbers for the entire 2020 wildfire season.
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So let's now break down the insurance argument with this article from the AP.
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Going back almost two years, California insurance market rattled by withdrawal of major companies.
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You mean to tell me that we've had advanced warning for over a year and a half that insurance
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companies were pulling out because they could not deal with fire damage, and yet here we
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Everybody knew the risk of wildfires were increasing.
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And what did the California government do about it?
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But let's break down how the insurance fell apart.
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In 2023, the AP reported two insurance industry giants have pulled back from California's
00:11:36.480
home insurance marketplace, saying that increasing wildfire risk and soaring construction costs
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have prompted them to stop writing new policies in the nation's most populous state.
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State Farm announced last week it would stop accepting applications for all business and
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personal lines of property and casualty insurance, citing inflation, a challenging reinsurance market,
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The decision did not impact personal auto insurance.
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Quote, we take seriously our responsibility to manage risk.
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State Farm said it's necessary to take these actions now to improve the company's financial
00:12:10.740
Allstate, another insurance powerhouse announced in November it would pause new homeowners,
00:12:15.200
condo and commercial insurance policies in California to protect current customers.
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Quote, the cost to insure new home customers in California is far higher than the price they would
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pay for policies due to wildfires, higher costs for repairing homes and higher reinsurance
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Scientists say climate change has made the West warmer and drier over the last three decades
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and will continue to make weather more extreme and wildfires more frequent and destructive.
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In recent years, California has experienced the largest and most destructive fires in state
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Some California homeowners already are going without coverage and a shortage of new policies
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A state run pool that serves as the insurer of last resort for many could face pressure as
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Now, many of you may not be familiar with what reinsurance is, and I absolutely love how
00:13:08.280
stupid our system is, but I guess it makes sense.
00:13:11.500
Reinsurance is insurance for insurance companies.
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The insurance company has an insurance company that if they have to pay out, some of their
00:13:24.200
And the insurance company's insurance rates have gone up.
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They can't necessarily pass those premiums on to the customer, though they are trying.
00:13:31.300
So ultimately, they're just basically saying, hey, we can't do this.
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Now, of course, I'm absolutely loving the climate change argument, and I definitely
00:13:48.920
But first, let's talk about the current state of insurance.
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Now, as I mentioned, reinsurance premiums were going up.
00:13:56.000
The insurance companies are having an issue with it.
00:13:57.780
They did try to pass that on to the customer, but it ultimately still doesn't work.
00:14:02.920
The issue is, no matter how much money you charge, first of all, you probably can't.
00:14:06.860
If it's too much, the market will not abide and people won't pay for it.
00:14:10.160
They're basically going to say, I'm spending more insurance than the cost of fixing my
00:14:16.420
The problem, failure of government to mitigate the disaster means.
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But let's take a look at the laws they passed so we can better understand.
00:14:56.480
Well, everybody's ragging on the insurance companies.
00:14:58.540
And to be honest, rightly so in some circumstances.
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A state statute passed in 1988 to regulate insurance rates and practices.
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Basically, this means that insurers must get approval from the California Department of Insurance before they can change rates.
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This means that insurance companies are basically like, hey, government, can we increase rates?
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You're doing a bad job and we can't afford to cover this.
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And what do you think the government's going to say?
00:15:37.240
So the government is regulating the insurance premiums, and I'm not saying they don't allow premiums to go.
00:15:44.840
They do, but they still have their thumb on the scales, putting pressure on these companies.
00:15:48.960
So it's harder for them to move quickly enough.
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And with the fires that were burning even last year, sorry, the insurance companies just said we're pulling out.
00:15:56.980
You can't blame a company for canceling a product that makes no money.
00:16:02.160
Politico reported this as, this could be the beginning of the end for fire insurance in California.
00:16:10.440
The damages could overwhelm the state's already stressed insurer of last resort.
00:16:15.900
The state's insurer of last resort, known as the FAIR plan, predicted that it would be able to pay out, saying,
00:16:22.580
we're aware of misinformation being posted online regarding the FAIR plan's ability to pay claims.
00:16:27.380
It is too early to provide loss estimates as claims are just beginning to be submitted and processed.
00:16:34.460
Private insurers could continue to drop policies and decline to write new ones,
00:16:38.260
as they've been increasingly doing since a series of severe fires beginning in 2017,
00:16:44.880
And the FAIR plan, which has been absorbing the shrinking private market,
00:16:54.300
Why California's insurance crisis leaves wildfire victims helpless.
00:16:59.140
Policyholders in L.A. have faced a wave of cancellations,
00:17:02.160
by some of the largest companies in the sector.
00:17:04.500
They say, while the L.A. fires are still raging,
00:17:06.700
having killed 25 people and caused billions of dollars worth of damage,
00:17:09.980
Californians are also feeling the heat from a slower-burning crisis,
00:17:13.840
the dysfunction of the state's insurance market.
00:17:16.600
Faced with the escalating cost of wildfires and burdensome state regulations,
00:17:20.420
many insurance companies have ceased doing business in the state in recent years,
00:17:24.120
leaving some of those worst affected by the fires to rebuild without help.
00:17:27.660
In July, America's largest insurer, State Farm, canceled 1,600 insurance policies in Pacific Palisades,
00:17:35.940
the prosperous neighborhood that was the first to catch fire.
00:17:39.200
While State Farm continues to do business in the state,
00:17:41.700
many other companies, including Amgard, American National, and Falls Lake,
00:17:46.280
have stopped signing policies in California entirely.
00:17:49.740
One reason why is that California has become the land of enormous insurance payouts.
00:17:54.420
As global temperatures rise, the state has languished in a historic drought,
00:17:59.520
helping to create the conditions for unprecedentedly ferocious wildfires.
00:18:03.800
Eight of the state's most destructive fires have occurred since 2017.
00:18:12.520
You can argue climate change all day and night,
00:18:15.680
but it doesn't change the fact that we are dealing with massive mismanagement.
00:18:19.340
And I'm going to break down at least my argument.
00:18:22.060
By all means, you want to talk about climate change and all of these things, fine.
00:18:26.360
But isn't California the liberal bastion that has implemented tons of regulation over environmental issues?
00:18:33.720
Have any of those regulations mitigated the risk of fire?
00:18:39.160
They're the state largely telling you about climate change.
00:18:44.600
Now we can take a look at, as I've already mentioned, ad nauseum.
00:18:58.560
And you want to tell me, but it's climate change?
00:19:02.460
Jumping over to our good friend Wikipedia makes it all so simple.
00:19:06.360
Major droughts in California history since 1900.
00:19:10.080
Tell me now, was the great industrial revolution responsible for the 1917 to 21 drought?
00:19:18.380
Every single decade, except for the 1900s themselves, there has been a drought in California.
00:19:27.700
You've got the 10s, the 20s, the 30s, the 40s, the 50s, twice.
00:19:33.240
The 60s, the 70s, the 80s, and 90s, the 2000s, and the 2010s, and then today.
00:19:41.580
Tell me again why you think that's climate change.
00:19:44.420
Now, to be fair, Wikipedia also does mention climate change, saying that there's an increase
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Fine, I can accept that, but I also need to point out, wildfires happened.
00:20:59.720
100 years ago, the state was substantially less developed,
00:21:02.900
so many of these wildfires may have gone largely unnoticed.
00:21:06.800
We have an expanding population, a massive urban center,
00:21:10.540
and a higher likelihood that wildfires will impact the public.
00:21:14.640
Thus, we will see the damage, the damage will cost lots of money,
00:21:21.900
If you go back to 1900, I'm sure there are wildfires.
00:21:32.120
California is not raking the ground floor like Donald Trump five years ago warned them to do.
00:21:38.760
So I don't think it's fair to blame climate change when we know they aren't doing what they've been tasked with.
00:21:46.340
Take a look at California Proposition 1, the water bond, in 2014.
00:21:50.300
They voted to build more water storage, dams and reservoirs,
00:21:53.700
to improve drinking water quality, and water recycling and flood management.
00:22:04.980
This reservoir on the Sacramento River has been planned for decades.
00:22:17.080
It's a proposed dam project on the San Joaquin River, west of Aubrey, California.
00:22:21.640
Construction of the dam is on hold, says Wikipedia.
00:22:24.320
The main purpose would be to supplement storage capacity in the upper San Joaquin River Basin.
00:22:28.940
Under the current proposal, Temperance Flat would slightly more than double water storage
00:22:33.520
on the San Joaquin River from below Friant Dam.
00:22:37.060
The project is highly controversial because it would flood scenic canyons and historic sites.
00:22:45.480
Why is it that some of these reservoirs aren't being built?
00:22:50.900
There's controversy over what it would do to these areas.
00:22:54.540
But what about these other reservoirs and water storage units?
00:22:56.940
Well, as it would happen, the state has environmental regulations, which means they have to do studies
00:23:06.900
And because of how long it takes, they are in limbo.
00:23:11.080
We've talked about building high speed rail in this country for a long time.
00:23:14.740
And California, the bastion of green energy and fighting climate change, cannot get it done.
00:23:20.300
The problem is overregulation makes it impossible to make these moves.
00:23:25.980
So I throw it back to my good friend Bill Burr as we break down this whole story.
00:23:30.720
You, good sir, I hope jokingly said free Luigi.
00:23:34.360
This is the terrifying ignorance of the liberal mindset.
00:23:38.220
I know maybe I'm offending a ton of liberals by saying this.
00:23:41.000
But guys, I don't like joking about Luigi Mangione in this regard because too many people take
00:23:48.580
The dude killed an insurance CEO in cold blood.
00:23:58.760
And I don't think it actually does change things for the better.
00:24:01.120
It causes security and these companies to entrench themselves and hide what they're doing.
00:24:10.600
Insurance companies are not innocent, but neither is the government.
00:24:14.600
And when you get corporate bloat and government regulation combined, you get some kind of weird
00:24:23.800
The lucrative merger of corporation and state, some would call it.
00:24:27.220
Only in this instance, I wouldn't call it lucrative.
00:24:31.280
Too many people want to blame the corporations because they see people getting rich.
00:24:38.520
We can't have monopolistic power on either side.
00:24:48.160
I think a lot of chemicals in food should be regulated.
00:24:51.200
But we can clearly see in some regards, it does make the problem worse.
00:24:59.400
And while activists want to blame climate change, maybe if it is climate change, you still
00:25:07.660
You don't get to be a state like California that blames climate change and then refuses
00:25:16.520
Say, Tim Poole, you made climate change happen.
00:25:34.220
I know he's a comedian and he's being funny, or at least trying to be.
00:25:41.340
That was him on a nightly talk show speaking to, I'd say the country, but Jimmy Kimmel's ratings
00:25:47.580
aren't that good, misinforming them and presenting an argument that we are all stupid, that a
00:25:54.500
former L.A. fire chief who said misstep after misstep was some moron in his underwear on
00:26:03.380
If we're going to make sure this doesn't happen in the future, and we hope that it won't,
00:26:08.180
we have to address the problems and we have to do it dispassionately.
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